1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to an exhaust outlet equipment mounted in a small watercraft such as a personal watercraft (PWC) propelled by a water jet pump, and a pipe mounting structure forming part of the exhaust outlet equipment to mount a pipe such as an exhaust pipe or the like to a body of the watercraft.
2. Description of the Related Art
In recent years, small watercraft, for example, so-called jet-propulsion personal watercraft, have been widely used in leisure, sport, rescue activities, and the like. The jet-propulsion personal watercraft is configured to have a water jet pump that pressurizes and accelerates water sucked from a water intake generally provided on a bottom of a hull and ejects it rearward from an outlet port. Thereby, the personal watercraft is propelled.
In the jet-propulsion personal watercraft, a steering nozzle provided behind the outlet port of the water jet pump is swung either to the right or to the left by operating a bar-type steering handle to the right or to the left, to change the ejection direction of the water to the right or to the left, thereby turning the watercraft to the right or to the left.
Furthermore, since the watercraft is small, it is difficult to effectively muffle an exhaust noise of an exhaust gas from an engine for propulsion. When the engine is required to generate a relatively high power, like the engine of the personal watercraft, it is necessary to muffle the exhaust noise effectively without increasing a back pressure of an exhaust system (exhaust line).
Meanwhile, in order to allow the exhaust gas from the engine to be discharged outside the watercraft, a downstream end portion of a pipe, such as an exhaust pipe included in the exhaust system, is inserted through an opening formed through a body of the watercraft. When such a structure is formed in the body molded from FRP (fiber reinforced plastic) by a hand lay-up or spray-up method using a “concave mold (female mold),” a complex structure is required to seal a contact portion between the pipe and the body at a location where the pipe penetrates through the body, because an inner surface of the body is a rough surface.